Published Works

BOOKS

The Irish Pub, Turtle Bunbury & James Fennell
(Thames & Hudson, 2008)

The following thoughts are an expansion on topics raised in the book itself.
They have not been published.

4. CONCLUSIONS

In Ireland, the traditional Irish pub is under serious threat. Figures
released in a joint statement by the Licensed Vintners' Association (LVA) and the Vintners' Federation of Ireland (VFI) in October 2008 show that 1,500 pubs have closed since 2001. Alternative figures suggest that at least one pub was closing down every day in 2007. In May 2008, the FLRT claimed more than 100 bars in Northern Ireland - or 7% of the total number - had closed since the introduction of the smoking ban there in April 2007. Many
more are being hurriedly converted into café bars, buffet restaurants
and motel-style lodgings to meet changing demands. The economic realities
are too complex for most pubs to survive in their pre-boom incarnation.
The reasons are manifold. The government's dramatic clamp down on drink-driving.
The ban on smoking in public places. The temptation to sell one's licence,
at considerable profit, to a Dublin pub chain or European hypermarket. Many
of those who might have ventured out in the past cite the high cost of drink
and escalating danger on the streets after dark as reasons why they would
now prefer to stay at home with televisions and DVDs and a carry out. Young
people in Ireland don't go down to the pub with their weekly wages anymore.
They invest their money in houses, cars and leisurely holidays. They communicate via Facebook and mobile phones. The upshot
is that if you want to see what a traditional Irish bar looks like, you
might have better luck visiting Chicago, Sydney or Cairo than you will in
Dublin, Galway or Tipperary. And meanwhile, in village after village, the
pubs are closing down.

Random Breath-Testing

The authorities were probably correct to clamp down on drink-driving in
terms of taking irresponsible young hooligans like my younger self off the
road. However, as of February 2008, they haven't managed to rectify the
immense aftershock the drink-driving ban has had on the older community.
Random breath tests put the fear of God into old people. It's all very well
putting young people off the road; they can relocate to a city and start
all over again. But older people are stuffed if they can't drive. It's the
end of freedom. For so many farmers and country people, the pub was their
principal refuge. They could perch themselves in a bar stool, sup upon creamy
stouts and golden whiskeys, puff tobacco, cackle and snort, exchange gossip
and fall in love again. The pub was an opportunity to drop in unannounced,
to make acquaintances with people you might otherwise never meet, to learn
something you might not have known. It was a haven from the worries beyond,
offering palette wetters and unexpected inspiration, essential solitude
and unstructured hilarity, unforced confessions and private celebrations.
It was a safe haven, away from braying wives, bawling children, barking
bosses and bleating priests. Yes, there were a few drunkards knocking about
but there were also a lot of people who simply went to the pub because it
was the only place where a community spirit was alive and well.

'To go for a drink is one thing, to be driven to is another'
Michael Collins (1890 - 1922).

The Smoking Ban

Our children will never believe us when we say some of the best pubs consisted
of fifty people chain smoking in the one room for seven hours straight.
When the ban on indoor smoking came, there was much murmuring of rebellion
in the four provinces. In the end, people accepted the new law without much
fuss. For smokers, it was deeply irritating because, at day's end, the law
made perfect sense and was good for them. I chain-smoked for donkey's years
and consistently failed to quit back in the days when everyone was constantly
sparking up in pubs. Within a year of the ban, I quit again and I haven't
smoked a cigarette since. The smoking ban started in Ireland so we knew
what that meant long before it happened to England. Some felt we were pioneering
an all new pub culture increasingly devoid of crack. On the plus side, Irish
pubs have been obliged to make outdoor smoking areas appealing and warm.
There has also been a marked increase in social interaction amongst those
who pop out for a smoke. For all that, many publicans insist the smoking
ban started the downfall of the pub.

Knockdown Prices

It's said that Charlie Haughey won an election when he dropped the price
of a pint. Certainly, everyone loves a cheap pint and the publicans take
a good deal of rapping whenever they raise the cost. There may have been
a method to this back when pubs worked hard at creating their own whisky
and supporting local breweries and distilleries. But now it's all giant
monopolies like Pernod Ricard and Diageo running the show. Moreover, in
recent years, publicans have realised they can get their drink cheaper from
the likes of Tesco and Lidl than they can from the traditional wholesalers.
This has a knock on effect that, at day's end, is only good for Tesco, Lidl
and Aldi. Not least because it's made a reality out of the once dreaded
prospect that people would prefer to stay at home with a cheap carry out
and watch the telly. Hand in hand with this has been a massive rise in the
consumption of wine in Ireland and wine is a classic stay-at-home drink.

Design Horrors

There was a time, not so long ago, when every town and village
in Ireland was ruled, absolutely, by publicans. Not only did they provide
everyone with life-saving refreshments but their premises frequently offered
further wares. A fistful of ham, a pair of leather boots, a battery, a bucket,
a pump. Such items dangled over both counter and stool, hypnotizing malleable
eyes at the very moment the head was tilted backwards to complete the downing
of a glass. In the fuzzy silences that come between drinks, there is plenty
of scope for splashing out on some perks. One wonders how often the bubbling
tempers of frustrated wives were quelled by the sight of their husbands
toddling through front doors, victoriously clasping a new loo brush or curtain
rail as the clock struck midnight. A great deal of modern Ireland's economy
depends on tourism. During the 1990s, the vast majority of Ireland's 'traditional'
pubs felt a need to expand their premises in order to accommodate the growing
numbers of tourists. The general and rather frightening trend was to refurbish
in a manner closely resembling the synthetic, fabricated 'Irish pubs' more
often found outside Ireland. Many classic pubs were simultaneously given
bogus names and kitted out with silly pseudo-Celtic wall-hangings, glossy
bar counters and the sort of grotesque colour schemes you get when you rub
your eyes too hard.

TODAY'S LUNCH?

Serving food is of course a way forward. It doesn't have to be difficult either. Rather than face the hassle of chefs, ovens and extractor fans, you could simply try selling some of Cully and Sully's six readymade frozen meals. All you need is a microwave and your punters can thrive on fine portions of seafood linguini, Irish stew, risotto and curry.

O drink your porter, tinker man, and wipe your creamy
mouth,
The dust is white upon the roads, the wind direct from the south.
Sigerson Clifford, Ballads of the Bog Man.

Clubs not Pubs

Younger drinkers prefer clubbing to pubbing. That should come as no surprise.
Even teenaged ancient Greeks probably preferred hanging out in noisy wine
cellars than lounging around gentlemen's clubs. But it's the 18 - 30 year
old population who spend the most cash on drinks and the industry has duly
acknowledged that fact with the evolution of multi-storey theme bars, rumbling
with loud music, flashing lights, funky décor, scantily clad beauties
and bar-staff who just don't give a hoot what your name is. Some of these
places are tremendous, others downright scary. The fact is they're all jammed
to the rafters three nights a week and that brings in a whole lot more cash
than six auld lads in peaky caps playing 45s over a few glasses of stout.

Changing Places

In old Ireland, an individual pub could rely on perhaps a dozen regulars
to fill the stools along his bar. They were the die-hard loyalists, the
old guard, who talked politics and played cards and grumbled their way home
many hours later. These were men who could put away upwards of fifteen pints
of stout in a single day. When these old codgers fell from their perches,
they were not replaced. One by one they fall and their peaky caps pile high
in hospitals and nursing homes across the land. In one pub in Meath, the
publican said he was selling a keg less of Beamish every year because new
Beamish drinkers just weren't coming in. With times changing and everyone
flat out trying to earn as many Euro's as possible, its small wonder that
so many of these more laid-back rural establishments have decided to shut
the doors. If the publican actually lives in or above the pub, then perhaps
that's a better reason to open. However, if opening the doors involves a
trek from afar, then it's all too easy to think, not today, why bother?
Or at least, not until the evening. A lot of country pubs won't open until
8 or 9 in the evening. Increasingly large numbers don't open until the weekends.
McCusker's in Clones only opens every third Sunday! And then, presumably,
there is that back-of-mind knowledge that you can probably make €170,000
if you sold your pub licence to Aldi, Lidl or one of the big pub chains.
But when local pubs close, they can leave a massive gap. Often the pub was
the only social option for anyone living in the community. Without the pub,
what are all these new homeowners living around the villages to do for social
life? Thus, they stay in and drink at home and never get to know anyone.

Cead Mille Faulty

While making this book, we visited countless pubs where the staff failed
to raise so much as a welcoming smile. The 'Cead Mille Failte' has
gone faulty. Too many bars are now staffed by surly souls who don't care
tuppence for the customer. We encountered many overseas visitors who were
greatly disappointed by this lack of interest. And for those who argue that
its because most staff are dour East Europeans, I can assure you that Irish
staff can be every bit as awful. The onus must be on the publican or manager
to ensure staff are as warm, welcoming and polite as possible. The person
behind the bar is absolutely vital to the ambience. A good barman, according
to one of our publicans, is streetwise and enjoys serving people. They should
be your host, your friend and, if possible, your shrink. And it doesn't
matter what country they came from.

'The public house is dark and comfortable with a feeling
of scholarship'JP Dunleavy.

Vanishing Manners

There can be no doubt that Ireland has become a markedly less friendly
society in the space of just twenty years. Sometimes it's hard to imagine
that we were ever a friendly nation but, while making 'Vanishing
Ireland', we learned that the older generation really were as
open and honest and kindly and welcoming as we'd been led to believe. Prosperity
brings about its own curses, not least with the whole country driven demented
by bumper to bumper traffic from Nassau Street to the Conor Pass. The upshot
is that we have become a more aggressive society and there is new depth
of wariness that converts some otherwise charming country pubs into those
unnerving places where everyone goes silent as a stranger enters. The new
generation of drinker does not sit up at the bar. He or she prefers privacy
and tends to sit away from possible interaction with strangers, hidden,
aloof. They are from a more wary generation. They don't make friends so
easily. So the barman gives up and turns on the TV, 'the divil in the
corner'.

Family Guy

Another notable change in modern times is that men are more inclined to
stay at home and help manage the children than they were in time's past.
It is no longer acceptable to pick up your paycheck and swan off to the
pub, leaving your good lady to do all the housework and change the nappies.
Indeed, I'm told one of the successes of Jim Larkin's Dublin Lock Out in
1913 was when the Temperance Movement put a halt to the common practice
whereby foremen paid the men's wages as they sat in their local pub. The
foreman would be rewarded with a cut from the publican as the helpless men
began to blowing all their hard earned money on drink. The same concept
fuelled the so-called Holy Hour, or Holy Two Hours, a daily occurrence until
not long ago, which was a strategy to get these men out of the pub. On Sundays,
traditionally, the only person permitted to drink in a pub were those who
could prove they were travellers which presumably led to a considerable
passage of persons from one parish to the next. Sunday drinking became acceptable
with the introduction of the seven day licence in the 1950s, complete with
the Holy Hour. The declining presence of married men in pubs is tempered
only by those who have craftily pledged allegiance to a sporting team, who
they can passionately follow every Saturday. Hence, the growing swell of
televisions in pubs.

TV Headfry

'It's a good thing and a bad thing but it can give a bit of atmosphere
too', said one barman. He may be right. I'm of the view that television
may create the illusion of banter but it is, by and large, nothing short
of an ear-splitting racket, utterly charmless and irredeemably wrong. Televisions
don't sparkle; they buzz and crackle and kill intelligence atoms. The
Tower was the classic Victorian bar of Clones. It is presently destroyed
on account of two televisions, perpetually on, blasting out two different
channels. Three old men perched at the bar were driven so demented by the
racket that they could no longer even mutter to one another. So they read
the same page of the newspaper over and over again, looked at their own
sad reflections in the mirror opposite and muttered to themselves. The barmaid
didn't seem to notice or care. This is appalling carry on and very bad for
Ireland. This is not the wonderful Irish pub we all dream of. Sure, fine
if you want to have a television room. Yes, its grand if you call yourself
a Sports Bar and show matches and hose racing. But if you want to be a charming
pub, then understand that an ill-placed television can and will destroy
all creative intelligence and maybe you should seriously think about turning
the damned thing off.

Grand Delusions

In a way, we are the creators of our own illusions. In the last 15 years,
the Dublin-based Irish Pub Company and its competitors have fabricated and
installed more close on 2000 'Oirish' pubs in more than 50 countries. Bord
Failte - the Irish tourism board - also spent a fortune promoting Ireland's
pubs as places where overseas visitors, particularly Americans, could be
sure of an excellent night of laughter and fiddle-de-diddle music, colcannon
and champ washed down with lashings of Guinness. The whole concept of music
in Irish bars was also fictional, a brilliant invention of Hollywood quills
and the tourist board that kicked off in about 1960. Only in very rare cases
before that did people actually stand up and start singing a song. North
Monaghan, for instance, didn't have a singing bar until J & Wright's
of Glaslough opened in 1966. Nor did Irish pubs serve food in times
past save, perhaps, a bowl of soup and a ham sandwich if you were very lucky.
Nobody had thought of crisps yet. But, of course, food is now an increasingly
vital aspect of the business and should probably be encouraged. Watch this
space, Messrs. Cully & Sully.

'In Dublin there's a beauty that has no match,
It is brewed in St. James's then thrown down the hatch'.
Frank Holt, 'In Praise of Guinness'

Republic of Gangland

One of our most depressing conclusions of all these various trips around
Ireland was that a gangland culture of some shape is rampant in just about
every town - and every village has become a town. These villages have been
turned into towns in the last five years with horrible cloned housing and
such thoughtless planning that it is inevitable chaos will reign and the
next generations will have little option but to mope, grumble and resent.
There's nothing for anybody to do which also invites trouble. The further
north you go, the more boy racers you find. There are huge gulfs between
people, a lot more suspicion, hostility and aggression. There is no apparent
order or discipline. Even the Gardai are scared because they can be beaten
up too, or have their families threatened, by people who just don't give
a monkeys about anything. Another factor that seemed to repeat itself, particularly
in the bigger towns, was an increasingly sinister side to binge drinking.
Now, as I say in my personal qualifications, I have done more than my fair
share of irresponsible binging in times past and loved it. But the essence
of why I drank was to have fun. For a lot of publicans, the essence of 21st
century binge drinkers seems to be considerably more intimidating. There's
an underlying edge of violence that frequently erupts into bloody noses
and, increasingly, knife, machete and gun attacks. The streets of many towns
are extremely unsettling places to be, particularly after dark. Even ostensibly
tough barmen confessed to being unnerved by the crowds gathering in and
around their pubs at weekends.

Last Rants

It's not that more drink is consumed now than ever before. It's more the
intensity of the consumption and how it's all packed into Thursday, Friday
and Saturday nights. We heard of several pubs where the owners have been
mugged in middle of night, like Miler Gormans on the Kells Road outside
Kilkenny or, just after we visited, the Smyth brothers in Newtown.
Another well-known pub felt compelled to close its doors on 15th August,
the village Fair Day, traditionally a merry occasion lately soured by more
aggressive elements. 'If you open, you face the consequences', explained
the owner. 'You get a lot of hassle, taps are broken, fights break out,
things are stolen. You need all hands on deck but you can't keep an eye
on it all'. When the Gardai were consulted, they replied: 'Our advice
is don't open tomorrow because we won't be here to help you'. I became
so alarmed by these tales that I emailed these observations to Brian Lenihan,
Ireland's Minister for Justice, advocating the legalisation of drugs as
a logical step by which one could at least terminate the raison d'etre of
this island's drug barons. And boy racers should be pilloried in stocks.
I also advised that publicans were feeling hard done by because they are
frequently blamed for creating all these social ills - for the marriage
break ups, rampant alcoholism, drunk drivers and so forth. I received no
reply of interest.